Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence

Gate passedSeeker and aboveModern transcription — not a facsimileJacob Boehme (1575–1624)PUBLIC DOMAIN as published. Boehme d. 1624; the Sparrow translation is 1656. Per-part determination MADE 2026-08-29: the eight front-matter segments carrying the 2009 electronic edition own introductory apparatus were withheld (three excised in full, five redacted in part where a public-domain title block or Boehme text shared the page). The remaining 5,022 segments are public domain and are open at seeker tier.905 of 1000 segments carry a modern register · 343 pp

Jacob Boehme — the works in English, and one in Frencheditor’s preface to the volume

Eleven books by a shoemaker of Görlitz who wrote, by his own account, because he could not help it. Ten of them stand here in the seventeenth-century English of John Sparrow, who translated Boehme within a generation of his death and whose prose is itself now four hundred years old; where that English has drifted out of reach, the facing pane carries a modern register — the same text with archaic inflection and spelling normalised by rule, never paraphrased. Nothing is reworded, and where no register appears beside a passage it is because the rules found nothing to change.

The eleventh book is not in English at all, and it is the reason this note exists.

Des trois principes de l'essence divine, printed at Paris in 1802, is the same work as Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence, which stands here as the second book — the same twenty-seven chapters in the same order, opening `Du premier principe de l'essence divine` against Sparrow's `Of the first Principle of the Divine Essence`. Its translator was Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, who gave the last years of his life to putting Boehme into French, and who has a shelf of his own in this Lycaeum.

That makes a closed circuit inside this archive, and it is worth naming plainly. Saint-Martin translates Boehme. La Iniciación, printed in Montevideo a hundred and forty years later, traces its own descent through Saint-Martin. A reader can therefore follow one thread from a German mystic of 1619, through the French philosopher who carried him into another language, to a Spanish-language monthly of the 1940s that claimed them both — and read every step of it in the original.

The two are shelved as one work rather than two because that is what they are. They are not set as facing panes: an English translation of 1619 and a French translation of 1802 are two independent readings of a lost German original, and pairing them line by line would assert a correspondence neither translator ever claimed.

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1re-conceived will go out of itself, and to open itself in its precious treasury. For in the re-conceived will to the birth of the light there is no source of anxiety, but only mere friendly desires ; for the glimpse riseth up out of the darkness in itself, and desireth the light ; and the desiring draweth the light into itself, and there the anguish becometh an exulting joy in itself, an humble cheerfulness, a pleasant habitation. For the re-conceived will in the light is impregnated, and its fruit in the body is virtue [or power], which the will desireth to generate, and to live therein ; and this desiring bringeth the fruit out of the impregnated will, [and presenteth it] before the will, and the will discovereth itself [glimmereth or shineth] in the fruit in an infinite pleasant number ; and there goeth forth, in the pleasant number, in the discovered [or manifested] will, the high benediction [or blessing], favour, loving kindness, pleasant inclination [or yielding pliableness], the taste of joy, the well-doing of meekness [or affability], and [further] what my pen cannot express. The mind would much rather be freed from vanitv, and live •/ * therein without molestation or disturbance.

29. Now these two gates are in one another ; the nethermost goeth into the abyss, and the uppermost goeth into paradise ; and a third gate cometh to these two, out of the element with its four issues, and presseth in together with the fire, air, water, and earth ; and their kingdom is the 346 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 16 1 Or mingle, sun and stars, which l qualify with the first will ; and their desire is to be filled, to swell, and to be great. These draw into them, and fill the chamber of the deep, [viz.~] the free and naked will in the mind ; they bring the glimpse [or glance] of the stars into the gate of the mind, and qualify with the sharpness of the glimpse [or ffosh] ; they fill the broken gates of the darkness with flesh, and wrestle continually with the first will (from whence they are gone forth) for the kingdom [or dominion], and yield themselves up to the first will, as to their father, which willingly receiveth their region [or dominion]. For he is obscure and dark, and they are rough and sour, also bitter and cold ; and their life is a seething source of fire, wherewith they govern in the mind, in the gall, heart, lungs, and liver, and in all members [or parts] of the 2 the four whole body, and man is 2 their own ; the spirit elements' own.

3which standeth in the flash bringeth the constellation into the tincture of its property, and infecteth the thoughts, according to the dominion of the stars ; they take the body and tame it, and bring their bitter roughness into it. 10. Now the gate of the light standeth between both these regions, as in one [only] centre enclosed with flesh, and it shineth in the darkness in itself, and it moveth towards the might of the darkness and fierceness, and sheddeth forth its rays, even unto the noise of the breaking through, from whence the gates of seeing, hearing, smelling, Ch. 16] THREEFOLD SPIRIT AND WILL 347 tasting, and feeling, go forth ; and when these gates apprehend the sweet, loving, and pleasant rays of the light, then they become most highly joyful, and run into their highest region into the heart (as into their right dwelling-house) into the essences of the spirit of the soul, which receiveth it with joy, and refresheth itself therein ; and there its sun springeth up (viz. the pleasant tincture in the l element of water) and by the sweet joy becometh blood. For all regions rejoice therein, and suppose that they have gotten the noble virgin again, whereas it is but her rays, as the sun shinetb upon the earth, from whence all essences of the earth rejoice, spring, grow, and blossom. Which is the cause that the tincture riseth up in all herbs and trees.

The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.

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Commentary

whole issue ·

Cross-estate[P-V]translated_asboehme:2:1:003

This English 'Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence' and boehme:11 are the same work in two languages — and the French is not just any translation. It is Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin's own: 'Des trois principes de l'essence divine', issued by the Périsse brothers of the rue Mercière. Saint-Martin learned German in his fifties expressly to read Boehme, and spent his last years translating him. The estate therefore holds, side by side, the text that formed the Unknown Philosopher and the form in which he gave it to France — the single most direct documentary link between the two founders of this corpus.

→ boehme:11